


Scarcely a Cloud in the Sky

by Hyarrowen



Series: Shore and Ship [2]
Category: Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 20:03:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5883766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyarrowen/pseuds/Hyarrowen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ewen is back on his own land again, and needs only one thing to make him entirely happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scarcely a Cloud in the Sky

The Act of Indemnity had been passed just a few months ago, and Ewen had taken up his holding of Ardroy once again - though Aunt Margaret had been so good a factor that he had, in truth, not a great deal to do when he returned home. At times he was reduced to farm-work on his tenants' crofts in order to make himself useful - apart from standing between them and the soldiery that filled Lochaber, red and regimented as so many Roman legions. Lochiel's house of Achnacarry was in ruins, and his son, the young Chief, still in exile, along with Archie's family, though Dr. Cameron's current whereabouts was anyone's guess.

Aunt Margaret had been overjoyed to see her nephew back home once more. “It's been too long, my darling lad – though a lad no longer, 'tis true!” she said on the evening of his arrival.

“Too long for me to be away from my father's house, and from the best of all aunts!” replied Ewen. He was a little tired, it was true; the journey across the sea, and the slow sad ride down the occupied Great Glen had set his wounded leg to aching once again, as it had not in France's kinder climate. The horse he had ridden as an officer in King Louis' Cameronian regiment had been far better than the ill-paced hack that had carried him from Inverness. No matter. He was home once more. 

Aunt Margaret had been fain to talk of finding a lady for the house to begin with, and in the end Ewen had let it be known that his heart had been broken by Alison's rejection of him, just before Culloden. And indeed it had been, for the space of a few months, and had been the cause of much anguish; but then in France something quite unexpected had happened that had brought him ample compensation for that loss. He found it necessary, however, to maintain the fiction, more by what he did not say than by what he did. The truth would never do.

So, when a letter arrived at Ardroy, written in a bold and familiar hand, he opened it with pleasurable anticipation, and was not disappointed. “Aunt Marget!” he called, “Colonel Windham is coming to Lochaber!” And he instantly followed this up with, “I must find some pretext to send Lachlan away.” Lachlan, in company with a couple of crofters, was despatched within the week to the cattle sales at Crieff. That being done, Ewen could settle to wait for Keith's arrival with simple pleasure.

It was with some startlement that Ewen saw him ride up out of the narrow glen that led from Achnacarry to Ardroy, though. He had taken to working around the mouth of that defile, just on the off-chance of meeting him, and had been lucky enough to do so (though it was perhaps all of a piece with the unlikely meetings that had taken place between them in the past.) But there he saw a man riding towards him, on a magnificent bay horse to be sure, but in civilian clothes. He had not often seen Keith so dressed.

There was a stand of sycamore trees at the end of the glen, sheltered and leafy, and Ewen waved and called Keith within it; who turned his horse to its shade; and, once safely hidden, descended from its back straight into Ewen's arms. 

“I hardly recognised you without your uniform!” said Ewen, laughing, once the first starved kiss had been exchanged. It had been a full six months since they had seen each other.

“I've no mind to make myself a target - I learned my lesson at Morar - nor yet to ride with an escort; and you have seen me on many an occasion without my uniform,” Keith reminded him, tipping back his head slightly to regard Ewen from under heavy eyelids, which gave him the sardonic look Ewen was familiar with of old.

“Not clothed, though! And you are to stay – how long?”

“A fortnight, if you'll have me. I've seen my brother and my step-father – one day you must meet them! – and now I'm on furlough until October. Not before time. Last month I was in Austria. It's a long, hot journey from Vienna in the height of summer. Scotland will certainly be a change from all that!” He disengaged from Ewen's arms, and stretched so his back cracked. “Ah, that's better. Ewen, we should not stay here like this, as I am sure you would know if you considered it for but an instant. Anyone might come by. Where are your tenants?”

“Bringing the sheep down from the shielings. They'll lead them a merry dance. And then there's the penning of them in the glen. You've come at a busy time, Keith Windham.”

“I wonder if I can still shear a sheep?” Keith mused, and at Ewen's astonished look, said, “Stowe is on the Welsh borders, and I helped once or twice with the shearing, when I was a boy home from school. There was a trick to it: maybe I can remember it, like so many skills you learn in youth.”

“I'm glad to hear it! You can help us once you're over the journey.” And Keith groaned, and they turned towards the house of Ardroy, leading the horse up that long final slope.

It was a frustrating few days to start with, though. For of course they could not be together in that house, not as they had been at Versailles, where no-one much cared who was sleeping with whom, and indeed it was thought it a little odd if those who shared a bed _should_ be sharing a bed. The snatched moments each evening when Ewen saw Keith to the bedchamber that had been his years ago, when he had first stayed at Ardroy, were all that they could manage, and they were not enough.

“I will run mad with all this wanting,” muttered Keith, on the third such evening, as they released each other before need could override sense. “Is there nowhere we can get away by ourselves?”

“If those last sheep have not come in by morning, we'll go up into the hills for them,” said Ewen. He was rather dishevelled, and aching, and for two pins would have whisked them both back to the sycamore grove, except that Aunt Margaret would certainly wonder why. “Tomorrow.”

“Let us hope they have not.”

“Indeed.” Ewen passed his hands over his hair to tidy it, cast one last glance at Keith, and got himself out of the door before he could be further tempted.

The sheep had not come in by breakfast. Ewen and Keith made known their intentions to find them, and within the hour were on their way up the Allt Buidhe burn. They climbed past the small fields of crops, to the winter pastures, to the hillside proper, with its heather coming in to imperial bloom, and the cry of an eagle floating down now and then from the region of small clouds, white as the sheep themselves, beyond it. Past scatters of shielings, now deserted, they went, and up beside the brown, peaty waters of the burn running swift and merry down to the loch. 

Keith began to mutter about unnecessary steepness before very long, but Ewen stopped and pointed back down the slope to the loch in its sapphire glory among the golden birches and the dark pines, and the rowans wearing their blazing autumn finery, and Keith conceded, “It's well enough, I grant you that, on a day like today.” 

“Soft southerner,” teased Ewen, smiling sidelong.

“You will shortly discover whether I am soft or not.”

“Ah, Keith - I've missed you. Even these last few days, I've missed you!”

“Let us but find these elusive sheep, and we can have the rest of the day to ourselves.”

On the high slopes of Meall a Choire Glas they found the sheep, circled round behind them, and sent them scurrying down to the glen, their fleeces bouncing on their backs, and after carefully surveying the wide landscape for people, climbed still further to a little corrie under craggy rocks that Ewen remembered from expeditions as a boy. So high was this that there was snow in a crevice or two under the northernmost rocks surrounding it, with the newborn burn hurrying down from it, and a grassy plot on the banks of that burn.

“Here,” Ewen said, and his voice was rough; they dropped their bags of provisions and came together with the urgency of stags. They kissed, and fumbled at each others' garments, and fell upon each other; the extremity of their first need was met in a few strong thrusts, and they dozed on the short grass in the sun for an unknown length of time thereafter, stark naked, in close embrace to ward off the snow-breath of the heights.

“Again,” said Ewen, when they had recovered. “No, wait.” A growl of frustration from Keith; but Ewen fished around in the pocket of his coat, discarded an arm's length away, for something he had brought in readiness, and dabbed his fingers in it. “Are you ready?”

“Damn it, Ewen, of course I'm ready: get _on_ with it!” Lying prone on the turf starred with eyebright and saxifrage, his head resting on his forearm, looking daggers at Ewen over his shoulder, Keith was a sight to arouse the ardour of any shepherd-god in the pantheon; and Ewen laughed for joy and obliged him. 

“If those sheep are the last of the flock to be penned, you know I will have to release some of them in the night,” remarked Colonel Windham a lazy time later, and the laird of Ardroy answered sleepily, “If you do not, I most assuredly will.”

FIN


End file.
